Re: Fwd: Re: factors relating to growth

["Darren J. Hanson" <djhanson@calweb.com>]

>In addition, I have talked to more than one discus breeder who felt 
>their fry grew better in slightly harder water than the water in the 
>breeding tank.  I have no statistics to prove this, nor have I ever 
>attempted to test this.
>
What I do is remove the pair to another tank and let the fry grow out more
until they can be put into a 55 gallon tank. Other times, when space is low,
I leave the fry in their tank and do more water changes more often. (Instead
of 50% once a week to 25% everyday.) At one month of age I start acclimating
my apisto fry to hard water. It makes the sale of the fry easier for the
stores to handle once acclimated and other hobbyists won't need to be in
such a fright that they bought fish that require soft water right now. I'm
sure this chases many people away from apistos for the first time because
they aren't sure they want to invest money into an RO unit for one tank.
When I'm not spawning the adults, they too are acclimated to the harder
water. I housed a beautiful pair of Dicrossus filamentosus for over a year
in harder water until I sold them two months ago at the PCCA meeting.

With the change over to harder water and the addition of other foods I found
the fry to grow more rapidly. I don't know if it just because of the
slightly harder water. I had a 55 a month ago that housed a group of A.
cacatuoides for growout and had been acclimated to the harder water for over
3 months. I was totally shocked when I went to remove all the fish for sale
that they had actually been spawning in the tank!

I don't know if this classifies as a test.

Kaycy